Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux, by that I mean that I know nothing! I've had my Acer Aspire for a while now and kept being prompted to upgrade my browser to Firefox 3.6. I thought I'd finally tackle this and after much rummaging around I managed to upgrade. Whilst at it I thought I'd also update my flash player plugins and again seem to have managed. However..I didn't know at the time if my netbook was 64 or 32bit so I installed 64bit stuff - turns out I'm on 32bit. Anyway, I went back and got the 32 bit stuff as well and I thought everything was great but now I can't change my volume settings with the Fn with up and down keys anymore. I get the little display but with no green progress line in it. Volume works but only through the main volume settings rather than with the keys. I know it's a minor thing but I'd like to know what I've done and how to fix it.
So:
How do I get my volume controls to work as before and display as before?
How do I know if I'm 32 or 64 bit? where would that be apparent?
Having installed the wrong thing how do I go about uninstalling?
Should I just give up now and get a man in?! lol
Any help would be SO much appreciated.

To know if your machine is 32 bit or 64 bit, type the command:
uname -arn
If its 32 bit it will display like this:
if its 64 bit it will show x86_64 instead of i386

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How you uninstall depends, like a lot of things, on what distribution of Linux you use: that's why it's a good idea to set your profile so that your posts show that information.

Your menu should include something like System - Administration - Add/remove software which will do the job, though a command is faster:
su -c "rpm -e unwanted_program"
on my system, but probably not on yours.

1 members found this post helpful.

Oh dear - this is how rubbish I am, it took me a couple of goes to realise I hadn't done the su thing to get into the root bit! Got there in the end though, thank you! It's not very obvious if you don't know or is that just me?! I think I was expecting something to actually say 32bit! :-)

David - I know this must sound daft, I'm actually not sure what distribution of Linux I am using! If I tell you I am using an Acer Aspire 1 with linpus lite, does that give you anything to go on? How would I actually know? I'm assuming something to do with Fedora but I couldn't tell you anymore than that. When I said I didn't know much I really wasn't kidding! Honestly - I need spoonfeeding!

Linpus Lite is a Taiwanese Linux distro based on Fedora, so the command I gave should work.

You can see what you've got at http://www.linpus.com/, but this forum is obviously the place to get support.

Thanks David that's really helpful. I don't suppose you have an answer for my missing volume bar do you?! (I can only adjut volume using master volume, not Fn keys. Voume display comes up but doesn't actually do anything and there's no green progress bar).
I really appreciate the help I've had from you both - thank you!

The volume trick with Fn is an Acer/Linpus thing, so some-one else with experience of that computer will have to help you with that. I've never managed to get the volume buttons on my Logitech keyboard to work (in five years!) so you may be stuck with the other method.